Has A UFO Hunter Discovered A Crashed Flying Saucer On Google Earth That’s Over 200-Foot Long?

The first, most common use, sees many of us zoom in on our own homes and exclaim "Look! You can see the bins/the car/the cat!".

The second, more niche function, is in providing "researchers of the unknown" like Valentin Degterev with vast quantities of satellite imagery through which to dig on a slow Sunday evening. And Degterev believes he's just come up with a Google Earth finding far more exciting than spotting your old Vauxhall Corsa from space.

The UFO enthusiast, based in Nizhny Tagil in central Russia, believes he has spotted a flying saucer sticking out of the snowy reaches of northern Antarctica - at coordinates 80°34'08.4"S 30°05'19.3"W to be precise.

See that dark slither in the snow? That, believes Degterev, is a ship measuring some 70 metres (approx 230ft) by 20 metres (approx 65ft).

Convinced? Andrew Fleming from the British Antarctic Survey isn't. He told the MailOnline that while we might wish to ascribe more sinister properties to the dark shape, it's likely nothing more than a crevasse.

"A crevasse is a lot of ice formed by differential movement of the ice," he said. "They can be tens of metres deep. It's one large slot, nothing unusual, but they are spectacular. It's certainly not a UFO, though."

So there you go. It's not a crashed plane, it's not a secret polar base, nor is it a downed vehicle from another part of the galaxy. It's a far less threatening giant hole in the ice, perfectly capable of swallowing an Antarctic explore and their kit without a moment's hesitation. Probably.

Either that or The Thing was actually closer to reality than you first thought...